One minute guide: Care Act

What is the Care Act

The Care Act 2014 sets out the vision for adults in England who need care and support.

The act aims to:

• make care and support clearer and fairer
• promote people’s wellbeing; enable people to prevent and delay the need for care and support
• put people in control of their lives so they can pursue opportunities to realise their potential

The act outlines a single national eligibility threshold for care and support and is in three parts:

1. Care and support
2. Care standards
3. Health

This guide focuses on part 1 - Care and Support which consolidated and modernised care and support legislation, introducing additional duties for local authorities and additional rights for service users and carers.

Why the Act was introduced

The Act was introduced to be both a reforming piece of legislation (it changes the law) and a consolidating piece of legislation (it repeals many previous laws relating to care and support and replaces them with this Act).

The government’s vision in the Care Act was to redefine the relationship between the state, local authorities, citizens, service users and carers with the expectation that we all think differently about adult social care:

• to ask, “What can you do for yourself, within your local community, to help meet your own care needs?”.
• rather than: “How much care and support do you need?” and “What can the state do for you?”

Under the Care Act, local authorities must ensure that people who live in their areas:

• receive services that prevent their care needs from becoming more serious or delay the impact of their needs
• can get the information and advice they need to make good decisions about care and support
• have a range of high-quality, appropriate services to choose from

Duties and functions for local authorities in the Act

The duties and functions for local authorities include:

The promotion of wellbeing duty

Such as:

• personal dignity
• physical and mental health and wellbeing
• protection from abuse and neglect

The prevention duty

Arranging services or taking other steps to prevent, reduce or delay people’s need for care and support.

Provide information and advice

Essential in enabling people to take control and make informed choices about their own care and support needs - there is the Leeds Directory in place to support this.

Assessment

Using a person-centred approach to identify the needs and outcomes adults wish to achieve in their day-to-day lives includes the duty to carry out a needs assessment regardless of the level of the adult’s needs or their level of financial resources.

Eligibility

Decided through the National Eligibility Criteria. The criteria includes:

• physical or mental impairment or illness
• unable to achieve one or more defined outcomes

as a consequence likely to be a significant impact on their wellbeing.

Carers assessment and provision of services

Carers Leeds provide information, advice and support to carers. Where a carer's assessment is needed, this is carried out by Adult Social Care.

Young carers

Assessments of young carers to establish whether they are:

• able and willing to care now and when they turn 18
• work or participate in education training or recreation or wish to do so

Prisoners (adults)

Duty to assess and provide care and support includes:

• prisons
• approved premises
• bail hostels

Safeguarding

Duty to protect from abuse and neglect. The Act cited some other areas of abuse:

• modern slavery
• domestic abuse
• self neglect

Transitions

Person-centred assessments at the right time so that the local authority can anticipate the needs of the young person as an adult. This includes young people:

• with a learning or physical disability
• who have a sensory impairment
• in young offender institutions
• in secure children’s homes
• secure training centres (or other places of detention)
• in the youth justice system
• who are vulnerable to a range of risks and vulnerabilities, such as child sexual exploitation

Other duties and functions relate to:

• self funders
• duty to promote integration
• charging
• shaping the market through commissioning

Printable version